More Physical Growth Underway
17 September 2005
Work is now well under way on the next building on campus. It is
a $10 million Science building, although smaller than our previous
$10 million Science building because of cost escalation in the
intervening years. It is located on the main spine, next to the
current Science building, and extending toward the lake and wetland
area.
We would like to have constructed a building four or five times
the size, to anticipate the growth that we know is ahead of us,
especially since the announcements about the hospitals next door to
the campus. But proceeding in that way was not possible. As it is,
we have had to borrow $30 million to physically develop campus
infrastructure, taking us to the limit of our borrowing
capacity.
In recent years, the Federal Government's confirmation of
significant growth places for USC has been welcomed, and the
guaranteed future growth to ensure we achieve economies of scale is
an added bonus.
Unfortunately, this growth is not matched with funds for
buildings, so we are forced to borrow, and then diminish our annual
operating funds in order to repay the debt. In this respect, the
region is being supported for new places, but short-changed with
respect to matching capital funds, and thus impeding the pace of
progress that ought to be occurring.
The Science building will be ready in about a year, and we have
already had to think about how we can fund a further such building
in the very near future.
Another building has reached the final design stage and we will
soon go out to tender, ahead of construction in the months ahead.
This one will house student services and have staff rooms, lecture
theatre, and tutorial space, as well as space for a new Chancellery
area sometime into the future.
The building is located to parallel the Library between the
current Arts building on one side and the Administration building
on the other. It is a vitally important location for a range of
reasons. It must be a building that complements the iconic Library,
extends the central social hub and cafe area, provides more
internal covered space for relaxation, whilst being of an
appropriate monumental scale.
The building that we wanted would have cost around $15 million
so we have had to 'shell' many of the spaces, and will develop them
gradually if and when money becomes available in the years ahead.
Our hope is that both the State and Federal Governments will be
sympathetically disposed toward the needed developments.
In the current climate of restraint on capital funding, however,
I think it will be a very long time before some of the 'shells' are
made operable, and the Chancellery area will certainly be the
last.
In places like North America there are often many donors who
have lecture theatres, tutorial rooms, etc named after them to
recognise their funding of those spaces. Whilst there are examples
of this happening in the older universities in Australia, it is a
much less frequent occurrence here. Even when we have tried to
enlist the help of major banks to sponsor the Innovation Centre,
and have the Centre appropriately named, there is little interest,
and again, the contrast with the incentive-driven financial
environment of the US is stark.
So a new university like ours continues to struggle successfully
with a funding environment with which no previous university in the
history of this country has ever had to contend. New universities
in this country in previous decades were extended a level of
financial generosity about which we can only dream. Yet we continue
to develop our academic and physical environment so quickly that we
are already emerging as a major player of the Twenty-first
Century.
Professor Paul Thomas is Vice-Chancellor of University of
the Sunshine Coast